Food for thought!

Do we really get to choose what we believe? Our life is a testament to the fact that our beliefs continually change and evolve! Or is it!?
A thought experiment explained by Steven Bartlett from his bestseller, "The Diary of a CEO":
Think of someone that you absolutely love; your mother, your father, your partner, your dog - the most important person (or animal) in your life.
Now visualize them tied to a chair, being held at gunpoint by an aggressive terrorist.
Now imagine that the terrorist says to you, “If you don’t believe that I’m Jesus Christ right now, I will pull the trigger and kill them!”

What do you do?

The truth is, the most you could do is lie - the most you could do is tell them that you believe they are Jesus Christ, in the hope that your loved one would be spared. But you couldn’t, genuinely, make yourself believe it. When I asked people if they could genuinely believe a terrorist holding their loved one at gunpoint was Jesus Christ if it meant it would save their loved one’s life, 98 percent of people admitted they couldn’t choose that belief - the most they could do was lie.

Having stubborn beliefs is a useful survival tool for humans because beliefs drive behavior -our ancestors, who stubbornly held the belief that lions are dangerous, fire is hot and deep water is to be avoided, survived long enough because of their beliefs to have babies who possessed the same stubbornness.

Thankfully beliefs change!

Going back to the example of the terrorist holding your loved one hostage under threat of execution; now imagine the terrorist grabbed a glass of water and turned it into wine (act Jesus is known for). Would this change your beliefs about the terrorist? Would you now believe that the terrorist is in fact Jesus Christ?

In my survey, 77 per cent said that this would be enough to convince them that the terrorist was in fact Jesus Christ, and in total 82 per cent said, their beliefs about the terrorist would change - the act of witnessing someone turn water into wine was strong enough evidence to cause them to change their belief.”

This thought experiment and the corresponding survey reveal a fundamental truth about the nature of all of our beliefs: the things we believe are fundamentally based on some form of primary evidence. However, scientific studies have repeatedly proved that whether that evidence is objectively true or false doesn’t actually matter - we subjectively accept evidence to be true based on our experiences and biases. There are still 300,000 Americans who believe the earth is flat. To change their beliefs, simply telling them they’re wrong, won’t work. Showing a flat-earther a picture of the spherical Earth taken from space by NASA doesn’t work because in order to believe what they’re seeing, they have to trust not only the picture, but the credibility of the source from which the picture came – NASA Flat-earthers trust neither; they believe NASA is fraudulent, astronauts are actors and the scientific community is in on it.

In Dr Robert Cialdini’s renowned book ‘Influence’, he explains that if we trust someone’s authority on a matter - if Lionel Messi tells us that Adidas football boots are better than Nike, if a personal trainer tells us we’re lifting a weight incorrectly or if a doctor tells us we need to take a pill - we’re very likely to defer to their authority, adopt their belief and do what they say. So authority figures are powerful forces for belief change, but the most powerful force of all is first-party evidence from our own five physical senses. As the phrase goes, seeing is believing. Because the flat-earth community is so distrustful of science, astronomy and really anyone qualified, the only conceivable way that you could upend their stubborn beliefs is to send them to space to have a look for themselves. This need to see evidence with our own eyes explains why so many crazy conspiracy theories withstand the test of time - why people dismiss climate change, believe the earth is flat and question the efficacy of vaccines - these things are impossible for most of us to see for ourselves. Likewise, someone lacking confidence in their speaking abilities is unlikely to become confident just because their mum tells them they’re a good speaker - they will need to acquire first-party evidence themselves, by speaking on stage and getting positive feedback from bias-free sources they trust.

"An idea a day, keeps the mind at play"
#myreflections #anideaaday #beliefs